Swiss fire fatalities not given routine autopsies: lawyers

The January 1 fire at Le Constellation, a bar in the ski resort town of Crans-Montana, in Switzerland's southwestern Wallis canton, killed 40 people, mostly teenagers, injuring 116 others. "It is incomprehensible that autopsies were not ordered immediately," lawyer Romain Jordan, who represents several victims' families, told AFP. "These are violent deaths, so the cause must be precisely established -- fire, smoke, trampling, something else?" he said. "It is also important to determine how much alcohol the victims had consumed," he added.